Who invents medicines for the poor of the world? This question becomes very important where the WTO allows low income countries to be unbound by the TRIPS agreement. This agreement concerns medicines for infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. These diseases cause serious...

The introduction of pharmaceutical product patents in India and other developing countries is expected to have a significant effect on public health and local pharmaceutical industries. This paper draws implications from the historical experience of Japan when it introduced product patents in...

This paper examines the relationship between the characteristics of firm knowledge in terms of capital, diversity and relatedness, and productivity. Panel data regression models suggest that unlike knowledge diversity, knowledge capital and knowledge relatedness explain a substantial share of...

Since the late 1970s, pharmaceutical R&D has grown at a rapid rate relative to sales and other variables. In this paper, we examine the determinants of pharmaceutical R&D using a pooled data sample of 11 major drug firms over the period 1974 to 1994. We find that expected returns and cash flows...

While there is a large and growing international literature on economic aspects of biotechnology innovation (e.g. work by Carlsson, McKelvey, Orsenigo, Zucker and Darby) these studies concentrate on the United States and Europe. The New Zealand biotechnology industry may be expected to develop...

The New Zealand Government has indicated a strong interest in fostering innovation and aims to concentrate on selected areas where New Zealand may be able to develop a new comparative advantage. One such area is biotechnology, which would build on New Zealand's existing comparative advantage in...

This paper provides a detailed description of the New Zealand biotechnology sector based on a re-analysis of the first comprehensive (1998/99) survey of biotechnology in New Zealand, data from an original (2002) survey conducted by the author and a detailed review of secondary sources. It...

A firm that introduces a new good enjoys monopoly profits for some initial period of time. What happens subsequently depends upon the relative strength of knowledge diffusion and increasing dominance. The first effect enhances challengers’ ability to develop the product, erodes the...

This paper investigates the institutional and organizational sources of change and persistence in the technological systems which bring new products to market in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Even aftre fifteen years of economic reforms, research institutes, manufacturers and wholesalers...